An Author’s Secret Weapon: Marketing Advice for Twitter

Today I have another guest post for you, by another one of my friends, N.N. Light. She is the author of the fantasy book “Princess of the Light.”

She’s not here to speak of her book though. Instead, she has some great tips to share about book marketing, and specifically how to best use Twitter to promote your book.

Aaaand, take it, dear Ms. Light!

Marketing Advice for Twitter

“What is the secret to marketing my book?”

I see this question a lot on Twitter and various blogs I subscribe to. In this age of self-publishing, the world is filled with authors trying to sell their books. Everyone wants to know the secret and to increase their sales. I also am asked this question and as I am just starting out in this great big world of book marketing, I have to rely on my experience as a professional Twitter marketer.

Twitter is a mystery for many writers/authors and I hope that I can shed some light on how to market your book successfully. Twitter, at its core, is a meeting place of conversations. Think of it as a social club for the world. There are over 645,750,000 active registered Twitter users and the average number tweets per day is 58 million. Twitter is unique in its ability to connect people from around the world in seconds. People tweet about everything under the sun and it is a very powerful tool for a small business.

How can you get noticed amongst the Twitter crowds?

Here are my top five ways that Writers/Authors can get noticed:

1- Be yourself. Are you witty, funny, sarcastic, serious or a combination of any of those? Tweet about everyday musings. People love connecting with people and if you are yourself, people will appreciate it. Don’t try to be something you aren’t or try to be what you think readers will want to hear. I am myself aka MRS N on Twitter and I tweet about a lot of things. I have met a lot of friends on Twitter and they ALL are excited about my book. Why? Because they are intrigued and like me for me.

2- Be creative in your tweets. You are a writer and have a wonderful talent with words. Craft tweets that would excite you and would interest you in learning more. I try to tweet in such a way that grabs people and makes me click on a link. Don’t be boring and just tweet out your book title, info and link. That is considered to be spam in Twitter and will likely be ignored.

3- Be engaging. Ask questions. Tweet fun writing/reading stats. Inquire after your followers well-being. If you follow me on Twitter (like many of you already do), you know that I welcome each new follower and say good morning every day. If someone retweets one of my tweets, I thank them. If someone puts out a tweet that something bad/good happened, I will reply. Why? I like to interact with my followers. It makes me seem like more of a person than a robot. It’s the human response and many of my followers appreciate it.

4- Quality is the name of the game, not quantity. Many people get hung up on how many followers they have. I have never been like that and have always tried to bring a part of myself to Twitter. I am connecting with people, not beefing up my stats. Sure, it’s nice when a tweet of mine gets retweeted a lot. But that is not my goal. My goal is to be authentic and it comes across in my tweets. Do not follow others just so they can follow you back. Follow people because they interest you. I tend to follow back a lot of people because I am open to interacting with them.

5- Use Twitter’s secret weapon:the hashtag. What is a hashtag? # is a hashtag and when you use keywords like writing, amwriting, writers, books, romance, genre, etc. you are allowing people to find you via the hashtag. I am a HUGE proponent of the hashtag! It works wonders and it brings new followers to your Twitter feed and thus will expose them to you and your amazing book. It has been so successful that even Facebook is using the hashtag. Think of it as your own personal Google search. Many Twitter people follow certain hashtag subjects and your tweets will show up if you remember to use the hashtag.

Final Thoughts

Many writers/authors think that they need to be on every social media site from Facebook to Twitter to Google+ to Pinterest in order to reach readers. This is not the case and I suggest you pick a few and stick with those (unless you have all the time in the world). Your time as a writer/author is limited and it is best to concentrate on your writing. All the marketing in the world cannot take the place of a well-written book. Remember you are a writer first and a marketer second. Concentrate on the writing and the rest will sort itself out. 🙂

Do you have any social media marketing tips you’d like to share? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Marketing doesn’t have to be scary and as long as you are yourself, the readers will find you! Keep writing and keep smiling! 🙂

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It’s that first one that gets me. I don’t think I have any interesting musings to post on Twitter. I’ve tried, but I’m just not the type to do so. Then again, I might not understand what people mean by everyday musings.

I grabbed my name on all social media so no one steals it from me. I mostly stick to Twitter and blogging. A share my blog posts on Google+ and FB. The best thing is to pick two or three and stick with it. I also schedule tweets using Hootsuite and that saves so much time. 🙂

Reblogged this on Charles Gray's blog of writing and commented:
Excellent advice! Remember that every self-published author has tools available that a major author in the 1970s would have cheerfully murdered his or her best friend for. It’s all a matter of making proper use of those tools.

Excellent post, thanks for sharing this! It’s all sensible advice; the only one I don’t follow is the quality vs quantity thing. I work daily to raise the number of my Twitter followers as to expand my reach and manage to acquire about 1000-1100 new ones per month. That’s just my own strategy and I appreciate other authors may want a familiar, small community instead. I fully respect that; it depends on what each person wants mainly to achieve, I believe. I love hashtags, and also share the frustration of others when trying to tweet quotes from my books. By the way, you’re supposed to add the hashtag #novellines to them too! Oops – even less room for the quote!! 😛

Thank you for the comments and I agree. Each author has their own strategy when it comes to followers and expanding. Good for you having that daily goal. 🙂 I’m more of a connecting Twitterer and have found that the more I connect with followers, the more likely they are willing to buy my book and/or retweet my tweet. 🙂 I have never bought followers and am proud of my corner of Twitterworld. 🙂 Have a great day, Effrosyni! 🙂